THE BIOTECHNOLOGY and pharmaceutical sector in the Boston area is about to hit some rough water. According to the Brussels-based consulting firm Vital Transformation, the prescription drug price controls in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) will result in job losses of at least 500,000 nationwide over the next decade, about 30,000 of which will come […]
William Smith
Posted inHealth Care
Legislature should act on bill to limit out-of-pocket drug costs
EARLIER THIS MONTH, the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Financial Services held a hearing on S. 609, a bill that would limit out-of-pocket costs for patients paying for prescription drugs. Sixteen other states have passed similar bills and S.609 is a clear step in the right direction. In recent years, the out-of-pocket obligations imposed by health […]
Posted inHealth Care
Senate misfires with prescription drug bill
ON THURSDAY, the Massachusetts Senate passed another ill-considered piece of legislation, Senate Bill 2651, that would impose price controls on one of Massachusetts most important economic sectors, biopharmaceuticals. The bill is ill-considered because its authors assume, as they say in their press release, that the legislation is necessary because of “rapidly rising prescription drug costs.” This […]
Posted inHealth Care, Opinion
DC spending bill bad news for Mass. pharmaceutical sector and patients
ON SEPTEMBER 15, the House Ways & Means Committee, chaired by Massachusetts Rep. Richard Neal, endorsed prescription drug price controls as one way to pay for the massive $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill. Given its size, congressional Democrats are searching frantically for revenue to fund the new spending. One way of partially paying for the reconciliation […]
Posted inHealth Care
A rush to judgment on Alzheimer’s drug
THE BOSTON-BASED Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) sells itself as an independent source of information on the value of pharmaceuticals. But earlier this month, their bias was again evident when they tried to kneecap a drug for a dreaded disease before there’s even enough data to determine how valuable the drug really is. […]
Posted inHealth Care, Opinion
The folly of Baker’s drug price control plan
WHEN THE Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) selected Charlie Baker as Governor of the Year in 2018, the group may have misjudged Baker’s understanding of the industry. Baker recently offered legislation that would slap price controls on drugs—not just on the Commonwealth’s drug purchases, but also on those sold in commercial markets. Even a college economics major […]
Posted inHealth Care, Opinion
Stop the war on drug coupons
THROUGHOUT HISTORY, some revolutions ended up turning on the very people they claimed to be defending. With the calls to ban drug coupons, rebels against the drug industry in Massachusetts seem to be turning on patients themselves. Massachusetts is again considering a ban on drug coupons that significantly reduce out-of-pocket costs for patients, a ban […]
Posted inOpinion
Gene editing for plants could feed the world
THE NEW ENGLAND life sciences industry has produced an explosion of therapies for small patient populations with rare diseases. Last year, fully half of newly approved drugs were for these smaller populations. While emerging biotech therapies provide hope for small clusters of human patients with rare diseases, when deployed to the agricultural sector, biotech advances […]
Posted inOpinion
Baker’s Orwellian drug pricing policy
THE BAKER ADMINISTRATION recently released its budget proposal for one of their most high-profile issues: drug prices in the Medicaid program. To the surprise of many in the biopharmaceutical industry, there are some promising initiatives in the proposal from an administration that is thought to be hostile to the industry on drug prices. By far the most […]
Posted inHealth Care
Sudders takes wrong tack on drug costs
MARYLOU SUDDERS, the Baker administration’s secretary of health and human services, is a model public servant. Honest, smart, and an advocate for vulnerable people, the Commonwealth is lucky to have her. That said, her recent op-ed advocating government “rate setting” for drug prices in the MassHealth program displays an alarming misunderstanding of the business model […]